Wikimedia Highlights, December 2013
Highlights from the Wikimedia Foundation Report and the Wikimedia engineering report for December 2013, with a selection of other important events from the Wikimedia movement
Wikimedia Foundation highlights
New brochure explains how to edit Wikipedia
The Education Program team completed work on an entirely new version of the Welcome to Wikipedia brochure (now titled "Editing Wikipedia"). It is also available for translation into other languages.
"Drafts" feature provides a gentler start for Wikipedia articles
In December, the new Draft namespace was launched on the English Wikipedia, as requested by the local community. It gives all users (registered or anonymous) the option to start new articles as a draft, instead of publishing them immediately (which can carry the risk that the new article is nominated for deletion before it can be improved). Drafts are marked by a "Draft:" in the page title, and are not visible to search engines.
Recipients of Annual Plan Grants (FDC) and Individual Engagements Grants (IEG) announced
In December, 11 Wikimedia organizations were awarded annual plan grants totaling $4.4M, following the recommendations of the volunteer-run Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) in the first round of requests for 2013/2014. The approved amount was lower than the overall requested amount of US$5.94M, affirming the FDC's guidance to the organizations to be thoughtful about growth.
Also in December, the selection of seven projects for the second round of Individual Engagements grants (IEG) was announced. They focus on activities from outreach to tool-building, all aimed at connecting and supporting the community.
Successful year-end online fundraising campaign
The WMF fundraising team ran the year-end online fundraising campaign in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Roughly $18.7 million USD was raised from more than one million donors in December. During the two weeks when the campaign ran at full capacity, the team created and tested approximately 250 different banners. Banners will be run in other countries and languages throughout 2014.
Data and Trends
Global unique visitors for November:
- 533 million (+9.95% compared with October; +0.42% compared with the previous year)
- (comScore data for all Wikimedia Foundation projects; comScore will release December data later in January)
Page requests for December:
- 18.270 billion (-4.0% compared with November; -9.4% compared with the previous year)
- (Server log data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects including mobile access)
Active Registered Editors for November 2013 (>= 5 mainspace edits/month, excluding bots):
- 74,803 (-1.33% compared with October / -4.88% compared with the previous year)
- (Database data, all Wikimedia Foundation projects.)
Report Card (integrating various statistical data and trends about WMF projects):
Financials
 |
 |
(Financial information is only available through November 2013 at the time of this report.)
All financial information presented is for the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date November 30, 2013.
| Revenue | 14,609,876 |
|---|---|
| Expenses: | |
| Engineering Group | 6,589,458 |
| Fundraising Group | 1,439,053 |
| Grantmaking Group | 720,055 |
| Programs Group | 723,516 |
| Grants | 950,624 |
| Governance Group | 302,012 |
| Legal/Community Advocacy/Communications Group | 1,367,697 |
| Finance/HR/Admin Group | 3,029,513 |
| Total Expenses | 15,121,928 |
| Total deficit | (512,052) |
| in US dollars |
- Revenue for the month of November is $2.96MM versus plan of $8.83MM, approximately $5.87MM or 66% under plan.
- Year-to-date revenue is $14.61MM versus plan of $16.71MM, approximately $2.1MM or 13% under plan.
- Expenses for the month of November is $2.89MM versus plan of $3.73MM, approximately $844K or 23% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, payment processing fees, and travel expenses partially offset by higher outside contract services and recruiting expenses.
- Year-to-date expenses is $15.12MM versus plan of $18.43MM, approximately $3.31MM or 18% under plan, primarily due to lower personnel expenses, capital expenses, internet hosting, legal fees, payment processing fees, staff development expenses, and travel expenses partially offset by higher outside contract services and recruiting fees.
- Cash position is $38.8MM as of November 30, 2013.
Other highlights from the Wikimedia movement
Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 winners announced
The 2013 edition of Wiki Loves Monuments, the contest to upload freely licensed photos of national monuments to Wikimedia Commons, concluded with the announcement ot the global winners in December. This time, there were 51 national or regional competitions in 52 countries. With more than 365,000 submissions, the record from 2012 was broken. The global winning photo, by Commons user Kabelleger (David Gubler), shows a bridge in the Swiss mountains being crossed by a train.
New tool for GLAM mass uploads to Wikimedia Commons
The GLAMwiki Toolset was activated on Wikimedia Commons on December 17. It allows GLAM organizations (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) to upload many images (or other media files) at once, while automatically importing metadata in XML form. The work on this new MediaWiki extension was funded by Europeana and the Dutch, British, French and Swiss Wikimedia chapters.